


Through a river of stars

by ThatsMyJam (PaulAtreDeezNuts)



Series: Tumblr Shitposts [6]
Category: Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen, Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angsty Schmoop, F/F, F/M, Fluff, GODDAMNIT FEELINGS HAPPENED, Internalized Acephobia, Other, ace darcy, but at least they're funny trolls, i guess, shitpost, this is because I'm friends with trolls, this is not serious, turns out I'm a troll too, what the fuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-06 03:23:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16380467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaulAtreDeezNuts/pseuds/ThatsMyJam
Summary: “I love you. I’m completely and utterly in love with you. Please don’t get married.”I was given this prompt and the characters of Rey and Elizabeth.They're in love. Darcy is there too.





	Through a river of stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WordCubed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WordCubed/gifts).



As she stood in the cool mist of the churchyard Elizabeth Bennet's peaceful contemplation was broken by the sound of frantic feet running down the gravel path. She had dreamed and wished, but she hadn't dared to hope. Her heart swelled as she turned toward the cemetery gate to meet the object of her obsession and she was nearly tackled by a furious blur of beige and blue.

“I love you. I’m completely and utterly in love with you. Please don’t get married.” 

 

***

 

Rey had fallen into Elizabeth's life from out of nowhere. Elizabeth had stumbled over the feral girl in a field while walking to clear the buzz of home from her head. She had been frightened and aggressive and beautiful in the fading light of day, her tanned skin pricked with gooseflesh and her hair falling loose from its neat row of buns; it was like she had been dropped there by fairies. She was alone in the world but for Elizabeth, who was only a stranger.

But Elizabeth was kind and curious so she was a stranger who had a coat to offer and did. She escorted the cold and scared girl back to her home and brought her to the room she had lately shared with Jane, before her marriage. She fit one of Lydia's cast-away gowns and Lizzie marveled at the traveler's body, so hard and lean that she could be wrapped up in a child's dress but so full and strong that she was clearly a woman.

She spoke no English but her words didn't sound like any of the French Lizzie had studied nor the Latin she heard sometimes in church. 

There was no question, though, the girl could not stay in the Bennet home. Mr. Bennet found the situation amusing enough but Mrs. Bennet was horrified at the prospect of taking in another girl to feed and find a husband for. Mrs. Bennet was retiring from her task of getting girls married and in no way wanted to take up the project of finding a good situation for a savage slip of a thing who spoke only in gibberish nobody could understand.

Lizzie appealed to her fiancee. 

Darcy didn't fully know what to make of the situation but could deny Elizabeth nothing, so in the company of her aunt and her stranger, Lizzie went to Pemberly.

They had delayed their marriage out of concern for Georgiana, who was happy to be gaining a sister yet frightened to lose a brother. Darcy was also in the careful process of ensuring that Georgiana would never be exposed to the risks that Elizabeth had - she would never have her home stripped from her, she would never have a cad make off with her money. It was an arduous legal process that involved much riding up and down the country to banks and lawyers, and it gave Georgiana time to know Elizabeth.

It also gave Elizabeth quite enough time to teach Rey English and learn about the incredible places she said she came from. It was beyond belief - that she had done magic and lived in deserts and flown through the sky and the stars - and yet Lizzy believed her. She had been dropped by fairies, banished from her world into this one, where her magic was small and weak, and she had been dropped at Lizzy's feet to care for.

And over the months Lizzy had come to care quite a lot. Sometimes their lessons trailed into silence as their fingers traced each other, sometimes Lizzy caught Rey longingly watching her, as though she'd been the one to scatter the stars in the sky. Sometimes Lizzy caught herself staring at Rey the same way. 

They both knew what it was to be trapped and at the mercy of a world that saw you only as a grain of sand or a way to carry on a name. They both knew what it was to run alone, whipped by the wind and facing an indifferent night. They came from different universes and yet they were so close that it seemed as though they had always been reaching, twining fingers together through a veil. 

A cold spring morning found them alone in a marble hallway, shrouded in soft gray light. The weight between them was a strange gravity, drawing them closer in a dizzying spiral. Rey reached out a hand and Lizzie went to her. It was chilly in the hallway but their lips and hands were warm as they met in the half-light, both half-mad with waiting. Rey's rough, strong hands tangled in Lizzie's long loose hair; Lizzie's sharp tongue was careful for once, gently probing Rey's thin lips until they opened with a taste like sunshine.

In the shadows at the far end of the hall a tall shadow separated itself from the rest. Darcy couldn't watch this. He knew he wasn't wanted here.

 

***

 

Fitzwilliam Darcy knew he was a strange man. Or at least he knew that other people saw him that way. When he was younger his friends had gone off in droves, chasing the hems of skirts and sobbing at the scent of a glove. Darcy had not. He had other things to concern him; the care of his sister, maintenance of the manor, improvements in the village - a thousand other things, from selecting the best stone quarry for construction of a wall to learning how to tie better flies with the old anglers who sat nightly in the town pub and told tales.

He had friends, whom he loved dearly, and a sister who was the light in his world; his life seemed full enough without a wife, and the few times his aunt had tried to introduce him to a charming young lady he had largely been politely uncomfortable and occasionally violently repulsed.

And then he had met Elizabeth. At first she seemed like any other girl - pretty enough, but Darcy didn't tend to care about prettiness. Her family was largely unpleasant, and it seemed to Darcy that her sister Jane was detached and distant to truly love Charles. It made sense in Darcy's head, she reminded him of himself, after all. But when Jane fell ill and Elizabeth came to care for her he suddenly didn't feel like himself. She seemed a bit different than other women and he was more intrigued by her; the sound of her laugh and the way the corner of her mouth quirked up when she knew she was right. And there it sat for a while, until his disastrous proposal and the whole wretched affair with Wickham.

Darcy had taken Elizabeth's words to heart, though, and considered his behavior. He had been unkind, and for no reason. He had thought her family lesser, with only the excuse of his upbringing. He imagined Georgiana saying some of the things he had said, or thinking the way that he had thought, and was appalled. So he changed himself. Because he cared. Because he wanted Elizabeth to smile when she thought of him, because someday maybe they could be friends once more and he could bask in her warm regard that felt like nothing he'd known in the world and that he would always hunger for.

When he had proposed a second time, when she accepted, when he bent to kiss her it was pleasant, but he found himself disappointed and underwhelmed. He liked to hold her close to him, to feel the weight of her head on his shoulder or the strength of her small grip on his hand. He wanted to be around her always, to love her and keep her safe and whole and learn new things and explore and make new friends with her. He wanted to live a life with her. But when he kissed her it was merely pleasant. A kind of contact that neither frightened nor inspired him. Just a kind of touch, special for who he shared it with not for how it made him feel.

When he saw the desperation in Rey's eyes that morning, the yearning and heat - it made him feel small and cruel. Lizzy hadn't flushed the same way from his kisses, hadn't grabbed his shirt so hard he thought it might tear. That's what love was supposed to be - not the cold comfort of friendship and the occasional dance but this beautiful burning thing he saw for only a moment before he had to tear himself away.

And in a week he was going to take this joy from her - she would marry him and be forever doomed to longing, forever wanting to burn with that heat and left forever cold.

And he hated himself just a little because he still loved her enough that it might kill him to release her, and he wasn't sure he was strong enough to do so.

 

***

 

Three nights later he was able to find Elizabeth alone, for once. Rey was probably running through the moonlight, or staring into the river. She was odd and haunting and did strange things but she loved the land and Darcy loved her at least a little for that alone, even if she would be the destruction of his happiness.

Elizabeth was walking alone through the front of the house with a candle, looking at the way the small light made the shadows jump and flicker. She moved quietly and the flame sparked her dark eyes whenever she looked his way. 

Darcy shuffled his feet and made his steps heavier than was really necessary to let her know she wasn't alone, so he wouldn't scare her as a voice in the darkness.

"Elizabeth, do you have a moment to speak to me?"

She turned gracefully to the sound of him and he stopped before a large window, the cold light of the full moon illuminating him - it was such a sharp contrast to the rosy light that painted her cheeks.

"Of course," she said and set down her candle, walking to join him in where they could look over the grounds together.

"Elizabeth if, for any reason, you no longer desire a marriage with me, please, know that I can only give you my blessing and wish you well."

"William," she said with a frown, and put her hand on his arm. "I do still wish to be your wife. I never want you to think otherwise."

He nodded, then collapsed into a chair under the window so he could look up to see her face.

"I saw you in the corridor with Rey. I saw -" tears were starting to run from his eyes and speech was getting harder, "I saw you radiant. You say you want to marry me still, but I can never love you like that. I can't stir your heart and have mine stirred in return. And I - Elizabeth, you were so beautiful that day - I would be a monster if I locked you away from that to have tea across a table from one another and hold clammy hands as we learn to hate each other."

She put her warm hand on his cheek and wiped away the tears with her thumb and he arched into her touch like a cat, shuddering out the bones of a sob as she curled her arms around him and held him to her.

"William, I do love you. I love you so much, I love how safe you make me feel, how you would give up anything for me, even give me up to make me happy. I do want to be with you here forever but I don't want to be without Rey and it's tearing my heart to pieces."

Darcy wrapped his arms around her waist and offered her a share of the comfort she had pressed on him.

"Darling, why would you have to?"

"What?"

"Why would you have to be without Rey?" He pulled his head away from her and leaned back to look into her eyes. Holding her and being held by her had startled him - he still did care for her, he wasn't cold, he adored her completely - but he would never want her the way his friends had wanted women, he would never be angry if someone did want her that way so long as he could still love her and have her friendship and smiles and feel the weight of her head on his shoulder when she fell asleep reading late into the night. The realization crashed over him that if she wanted Rey like a fire but loved Darcy like moonlight it didn't matter, they both illuminated her, and neither one cancelled the other out. 

 

***

 

The pain of losing her friends so soon after making them ached in Rey like a rotting tooth. She had spent so long alone on Jakku, so many years scared and small and struggling, that when she made two friends at once it felt like her world had become fifty times bigger. They were full of jokes she'd never heard and stories of grand adventures. And together they had survived their own grand adventure, until Rey made the unforgivable decision to test herself against the dark side.

She had fallen into the force hole and seen a thousand of herself - she had turned and seen a thousand more, all moving with her and just and lost and confused. She had heard Kylo answer the question with the truth she had so long dreaded and needed: she was nobody, she was alone, no one was ever coming back for her. He had looked to her with black, broken eyes and she heard the decaying laugh of the Supreme Leader rolling through him, moving with the force, and the world imploded.

The thousands of Reys fell away, the ceiling of the cave caved in, and everything sharpened to a single point of silence, a world compressed into a small silver sphere that rang with its own quiet, before it exploded open again in a riot of pink and blue and green as she landed in a strange place at a strange dawn. She was too scared to move, too deep in shock. She tried to reach out with the force and found only the barest threads responding. She could move nothing, she could hardly feel the life around her; it was like there was a tremendous ringing in her ears, like she had been blinded by a dozen suns. She had never known how much she relied on that sense that was suddenly cut away. 

She laid in the dirt, trying to catch her breath and get her bearings, feeling the unnerving chill seep into her skin. And then someone approached her through the grass, and she was looking up into the doll-fine face of the most beautiful woman she'd ever seen and the beautiful woman was looking down at her with such clear care and compassion that Rey burst into tears. 

It was all a whirlwind after that. Elizabeth took her to warmth, Elizabeth fed and clothed her, Elizabeth fought to keep her from being sent away, Elizabeth took her to a new home full of echoes and beauty, with a young friend and a strange man and large trees to climb at night so she could stare into the stars and probe the hole in her heart in the shape of Poe and Finn.

And when she climbed down there was more Elizabeth - Elizabeth teaching her the strange language of this cold place, Elizabeth who found her a coat and breeches to wear when the skirts were too startling and Elizabeth who likewise convinced the household to accept Rey's wardrobe, Elizabeth with eyes as wide as saucers hearing Rey's stories of home, Elizabeth whose fingers were so clever and warm and so, so, so close but never close enough.

And then Elizabeth kissed her in the hallway and it had been so wonderful it was like feeling the force again. Rey would miss Finn and Poe forever, she would mourn for their mourning, but in that moment she knew that Elizabeth was the home she had always wanted.

And that would be taken away in such a short period of time. 

So Rey ran away. She went into the woods and armed herself and followed the darkness in her heart until she realized there was nothing she could do - she had to see her, had to see the angel who had become the center of her life, the weight at the heart of her, and beg to keep her.

 

***

 

Darcy quietly approached his fiancee and her lover in the hush among the graves. He saw the strength and passion of their embrace and the second-hand knowledge of that heat warmed him as well. 

Rey released Elizabeth and saw Darcy approaching and her face crumpled in misery. She knew she was a spectacle, dirty and dressed wrong and now crying before the lovers and their dead; she knew she was from too far away to be happy here and yet she could not keep herself from asking.

"Please, Sir" she sniffed and scrubbed at her face with the cuff of her coat, "please let me say goodbye."

Darcy very gently took Rey's hand, grubby from her time in the wood and the trees, and placed a delicate kiss on her knuckles. He took Elizabeth's hand, laid it on the back of Rey's, and kissed her hand as well.

"Darling," Elizabeth whispered, "please stay with us. William considers you our most wonderful friend, and I consider you much more than that." Darcy threaded his fingers into those on Elizabeth's other hand. She darted her eyes to the wall of the church then leaned forward and kissed Rey at the corner of her mouth and nuzzling against her nose. Rey looked to Darcy, confused. He gave a minute shrug and kissed the hand he held, offering his other to Rey to shake.

And a smile broke upon her face like sunshine as she returned Elizabeth's kiss, then turned and offered her arms to escort her friend and their lover to their wedding.


End file.
